Friday 6 June 2008

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, embedded automatic city generation tools in games

Sandbox games such as RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 provide a powerful set of tools to create 3D environments, in the case of RollerCoaster Tycoon normally a theme park, although as it is obvious from the vid below 3D virtual cities can also be developed.

An enthusiast known simply as 'Steven' (uploading to YouTube as alloria) has used the game engine tools to create a city with the end product easily rivalling visualisation companies output and demonstrating how powerful in-game editors have become when it comes to urban modelling.

Steven states tha this started out as a sandbox game, to experiment with different building types. "I created one building, then another, then another, then another, and before I knew it, I had nearly filled the entire map with buildings! I did of course leave a small area in the middle to build a small theme park, which contains two roller coasters, a mini-golf and an Enterprise ride. The main coaster is a "Giga-Coaster" and is known as "Thrasher". This is the only ride that I have filmed, as the other ride "Swift" can be viewed in my "Off-Shore Theme Park" video."

The city contains several buildings, including some tower blocks, a multi-storey car-park, several ground-level car parks, a church with graveyard, several houses with gardens, several small blocks of flats, some shops, a large warehouse-type shop, a bus depot, a rest home, a small park with a fountain, some office buildings and others...

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